Here in Denmark where I live the power companies (those who provide the electricity) have a plan to offer broadband with much higher download speed than normal. We're talking 10-30 - to maybe 100 MB download speed.

There are, in fact, some places where you already can get this.However, I doubt if the power companies have been succesfull at this point?

I think that providing high power downloads via the electric cables is the way to go. Then broadban connections will be as availabe and normal as electricity is today - at least in some places of the world.

Oh, and I forgot to add that my broadband is cable of sorts, don't have a download cap and that(normally) game downloads etc. happens with a speed between 10-30 MB/minute (or sec?)

Karsten, I've heard rumours about Internet by the power grid, even participated in a field experiment but as far as I know, it has not been a success anywhere. Reading the posts I realized I didn't mention my own connection. I have cable broadband >20MB, there's a price tag to it but I reduce it by providing a small WiFi network for my neighbours. They pay a a few Euro's to me every month so below the line my costs aren't too high!

Keep on posting people, I need at least between 100 and 200 reactions to get a good view.

I think there's some small scale experimentation with this in two or three (big) towns here in Denmark. I depends whether or not they can get fiberlines in the ground I think.

The thing is this, though:

Today we don't think about how we get our power (electricity) in our houses. The meaning behind the power grid being used for the internet really is the same. You just plug in your computer - and then the power for it as well as the internet connections some from the same place.

The bad thing is that when there's a power shortage --- your computer won't work - at all.

We had dial up for years and was hating it more and more. So we got a deal from AT & T last year and got broadband, and loved it cause it wasn't that much more and it meant that we could talk on the phone and use the internet at the same time without an extra line. Well, U-Verse came out here ( still AT & T), and they gave us a deal in December to upgrade to it which includes the tv and wireless. It was cheaper to change to U-Verse and have more channels, more tv's and wireless than stay with our cable and use the regular AT & T broadband, go figure (?). I think U-Verse is broadband, maybe someone can correct me. I know it isn't dial-up! I am totally and completely spoiled with the wireless and the broadband, and am still amazed with how much we can do compared to just 10 years or more ago!

It's been ADSL broadband with me for about four years now. About 2 years ago we got a free upgrade to 2MB (everyone on the island in range of the exchanges got the upgrade), and now they're talking about a similar upgrade to 8MB by the end of this year.

However, if you want real speed, you need to go to Japan and Taiwan where broadband can be as much as 100MB.

Regarding power line networks, I know that they can definitely work in a domestic situation - I installed one last weekend, though my blog has more details of the Netgear XE103 product recall that I'm now going through. (see my sig)

Finally, for those people with 'broadband but not stable enough for large downloads', you might like to investigate P2P networks like bittorrent (eg. uTorrent, or Azureus). Please note, I'm not advocating piracy. You will find that some of the larger downloads (OpenOffice.org and Ubuntu linux distributions, for example) can be obtained (completely legally) via bittorrent. These systems are designed to download even the largest of files in many, many chunks, and to be completely resilient in the face of an unreliable connection.

have dsl now..finally-find it a lot better than dial-up i used to have but this dsl is not the 'fast' dsl, which i think is like the bb you get from most tv cable companies. In 2009 i'm going to get THAT!